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I’m basically going to do three things in this post: take a look at the sizable number of “lopsided” early-season contests; compare Massey Ratings projected game scores with early lines for various games of interest; and make a list of the best opening weekend (and pre-opening weekend) matchups.

Why am I doing this? Well, why not?

Lines are courtesy of an offshore site to be named later.

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There are 136 contests in Weeks 0 and 1 that feature at least one Division I team. Among them are 44 FBS vs. FBS games; of those, 11 are games between Power-5 conference teams, 9 are Group of 5 matchups, and 24 are games in which a P5 team is playing a G5 opponent.

There are also 48 FBS vs. FCS matchups, 26 FCS vs. FCS contests, and 18 games in which FCS teams face non-D1 opposition.

Of those 136 games, 36 have an early-line spread of 30 points or more.

The breakdown of those 36 matchups:

FBS vs. FBS: 6

FBS vs. FCS: 18

FCS vs. FCS: 4

FCS vs. non-D1: 8

It’s not great that more than 26% of the D-1 games which take place prior to and through the Labor Day weekend are projected to be that one-sided. Of course, it could be argued that this is the best time for these matchups, given that the general football-loving public is starved for live gridiron action of any kind, no matter the blowout potential.

As of August 1, the largest point spread for any D-1 game in this time period is the Florida A&M-Arkansas contest on August 31, a Thursday night affair in Little Rock. The Razorbacks are favored by 51.5 points. Two games have 51-point spreads, Bethune-Cookman vs. Miami (the homestanding Hurricanes are favored, just to state the obvious) and an all-FCS matchup, Mississippi Valley State vs. North Dakota State (with the host Bison expected to prevail).

The biggest road favorite is Washington, favored by 30.5 points at Rutgers. Stanford plays Rice at a neutral site (Sydney, Australia); the Cardinal are 31.5-point favorites.

The other four FBS vs. FBS matchups with a spread of 30+ points: UTEP-Oklahoma (44 points, the largest spread in an all-FBS game), Kent State-Clemson (38.5 points), Georgia Southern-Auburn (35 points), and Akron-Penn State (33 points). To the surprise of no one, the home teams are all favored.

The other three FCS vs. FCS games with 30+ point spreads: Butler-Illinois State (36 points), Valparaiso-Montana (34 points; apologies to Adam Amin), and Delaware State-Delaware (33 points). Again, home teams are the favorites.

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In the table below, I’ve included every FBS/FCS game in Week 0 (eight games played on August 26, and one on August 27), and a sampling of contests from Week 1 (August 31 through September 4). Just to reiterate, not every D-1 game from Week 1 is listed.

The first nine games in the table are from Week 0.

Favorite

Underdog

Line

Massey

Differential

Colorado State

Oregon State

3.5

34-31

0.5

BYU

Portland State

32.5

44-13

1.5

Florida A&M

Texas Southern

1.5

26-24

-0.5

Jacksonville State

Chattanooga

6.5

28-26

4.5

Cal Poly

Colgate

7

35-31

3

USF

San Jose State

20

41-31

10

Stanford

Rice

31.5

38-7

0.5

Sam Houston State

Richmond

6.5

38-34

2.5

Hawai’i

Massachusetts

1

33-31

-1

Wake Forest

Presbyterian

39

35-0

4

Toledo

Elon

37.5

43-7

1.5

Georgia State

Tennessee State

18

38-17

-3

Arkansas

Florida A&M

51.5

52-3

2.5

Mercer

Jacksonville

21

42-21

0

Samford

Kennesaw State

7.5

38-30

-0.5

Towson

Morgan State

28

35-7

0

Oklahoma State

Tulsa

17

42-33

8

Ohio State

Indiana

20.5

31-17

6.5

Army

Fordham

15.5

40-24

-0.5

Eastern Michigan

Charlotte

12.5

35-27

4.5

Navy

Florida Atlantic

13.5

42-28

-0.5

Colorado

Colorado State

7

35-28

0

Clemson

Kent State

38.5

44-3

-2.5

Texas

Maryland

16.5

34-27

9.5

Oklahoma

UTEP

44

49-13

8

North Carolina

California

12.5

42-32

2.5

Villanova

Lehigh

6.5

28-22

0.5

Pittsburgh

Youngstown State

14

40-24

-2

North Carolina State

South Carolina

5.5

28-17

-5.5

Notre Dame

Temple

15

28-24

11

Georgia

Appalachian State

14.5

21-18

11.5

Michigan

Florida

4

24-20

0

Virginia

William and Mary

19.5

33-14

0.5

North Dakota State

Mississippi Valley State

51

52-0

-1

Texas Tech

Eastern Washington

16.5

45-38

9.5

Mississippi State

Charleston Southern

18.5

38-21

1.5

The Citadel

Newberry

30

37-7

0

Wofford

Furman

13.5

26-14

1.5

Gardner-Webb

North Carolina A&T

7

28-21

0

Baylor

Liberty

30

42-14

2

East Tennessee State

Limestone

28.5

35-7

0.5

Auburn

Georgia Southern

35

34-13

14

Air Force

VMI

31.5

41-10

0.5

Alabama

Florida State

7.5

33-21

-4.5

LSU

BYU

13

21-7

-1

Southern

South Carolina State

2.5

27-24

-0.5

Virginia Tech

West Virginia

4

29-26

1

UCLA

Texas A&M

3.5

25-28

6.5

Tennessee

Georgia Tech

3.5

31-32

4.5

—

Odds (hey, a pun!) and ends:

Not listed: James Madison-East Carolina, which does not have a line at present for some reason. However, Massey projects FCS defending champ JMU to win the game 38-31.

Western Carolina’s season opener at Hawai’i also does not have a line (at least, not one that I could find), possibly because the Rainbow Warriors play a game at Massachusetts the week before.

The same is true for Coastal Carolina, which opens by hosting the aforementioned Minutemen.

Two teams in the table that are favorites (UCLA and Tennessee) are projected to lose by the Massey Ratings.

Massey projects several games to be considerably closer than the current lines, notably Appalachian State-Georgia, Maryland-Texas, Eastern Washington-Texas Tech, Temple-Notre Dame, and Tulsa-Oklahoma State.

On the other hand, Massey likes North Carolina State and Alabama even more than the offshore folks do.

—

On his college basketball ratings website, Ken Pomeroy has something called ‘FanMatch’, in which “games are rated for competitiveness and level of play with a lean towards higher-scoring games”. It is a somewhat whimsical way to rate the potential watchability of individual games on a given night.

I’m going to do the same thing here. However, I am purposely not going to rate Newberry-The Citadel, which from my vantage point is the most watchable game of the Labor Day weekend.

Below is a listing of the Week 0/1 games that I consider to be the twenty best in terms of quality/competitiveness. I’ve created a secret formula to produce these game ratings; it is called “Tingle Factor”, or TF. The higher the TF, the better.

It’s the long-awaited latest edition of the Variety Pack, the celebrated TSA series that debuted earlier this year. The idea is to write briefly (I hope) on two or three different topics without being limited to 140 characters, like my Twitter tweets.

This is one of two holiday Variety Packs; in a week or two I’ll post the other one, which will (probably) feature The Citadel’s role in the modern-day proliferation of college football on television.

Both Variety Packs are inspired by Google Books. What I did, basically, is type in some search terms, and see what came up.

—

In 1948, the NCAA crafted a statute colloquially known as the “Sanity Code”. The Sanity Code was an attempt to end the practice of awarding athletic scholarships, something many southern institutions had been doing since the early 1930s.

The Sanity Code allowed schools to award scholarships to prospective athletes, but only on a basis of need – and even then the scholarships were limited to tuition and incidental expenses. Most scholarship athletes would either have to qualify for academic scholarships, or pay their own way, usually by holding down jobs while in school.

This was seen by a lot of the southern schools as an attempt by the “establishment” to keep itself on top of the college athletics pyramid. The establishment consisted mainly of the Big 10 schools, largely aligned with the Ivy League and Pac-8. To add fuel to the fire, in those days the Big 10 commissioner also oversaw the NCAA’s daily activities; Walter Byers, later executive director of the NCAA, split time between his NCAA duties and his primary job as the Big 10’s publicity director.

There were myriad problems with the Sanity Code. It was basically unenforceable. It was also seen as unfair. The southern schools had no interest in dropping athletic scholarships, especially when at the same time wealthy Big 10 alums would be giving bogus jobs to football and basketball players with no penalty.

The school most often ridiculed by Sanity Code opponents was Ohio State. Prior to the 1950 Rose Bowl, it was revealed that at least 16 Buckeye football players had cushy jobs with the state, including a running back on the payroll of the state’s transportation department as a tire inspector.

The Sanity Code was going to allow OSU to do that, but not let SEC or Southern Conference schools offer athletic scholarships. It’s easy to see why people got upset.

Enter the “Seven Sinners”. No, I’m not talking about the John Wayne-Marlene Dietrich movie.

In this case, the “Seven Sinners” were seven schools that refused to live a lie, and admitted that they were not adhering to the new statute enacted by the NCAA. The seven happened to be a very difficult group for the establishment to criticize. Only one, Maryland, was a major college football power offering a large number of athletic scholarships. The others were Virginia, Virginia Tech, VMI, The Citadel, Boston College, and Villanova.

For The Citadel, the notion of having athletes work jobs while at the same time go to class, play a sport, and participate in military activities was a non-starter (the same was true for VMI, and to a certain extent Virginia Tech). The school also questioned the amateur-but-not-really idea of the Sanity Code, with The Citadel’s faculty representative stating that “The Code defines the word amateur and then promptly authorizes students to participate…who do not meet the requirements of the definition.”

At the 1950 NCAA Convention, the association moved to expel the seven schools. That’s right, the NCAA wasn’t going to put them on probation, a concept not yet considered. It was going to expel them.

UVA president Colgate Darden made a principled argument against the statute, and stated that his school had no intention of following the Code. Maryland president (and former football coach) Curley Byrd worked the floor at the convention, making sure there weren’t enough votes to expel the seven schools, and using Ohio State’s situation (as an example of the NCAA’s hypocrisy) in order to convince some fence-sitters to support the Sinners’ position.

The Citadel, however, had already announced it was going to resign from the NCAA, stating it refused “to lie to stay in the association”. For The Citadel, either the Sanity Code had to go, or The Citadel would go. After all, it’s not like the school had a history of shying away from secession-related activities.

Since all seven of the “Seven Sinners” are still members of the NCAA, you can guess that they weren’t expelled. Expulsion required a two-thirds majority, and that didn’t happen (although more than half of the NCAA members did vote against the Sinners). This prevented a complete fracture of the NCAA, as it is likely the southern schools would have left the association otherwise.

While most of the votes supporting the seven schools came from the south, there were schools in the other parts of the country which also voted against expelling the seven, a fact not unnoticed by the NCAA leadership. The Sanity Code was repealed the following year.

In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that The Citadel was in the position of being an NCAA malefactor. However, it should be pointed out that 111 schools did vote to expel the military college from the NCAA on that fateful day in 1950. In fact, when the vote was taken, NCAA president Karl Lieb announced that the motion to expel had carried, before being corrected by assorted shouts from the convention floor. He then said, “You’re right, the motion is not carried.” Lieb had forgotten about that two-thirds majority rule for passage; the vote to expel The Citadel and the other six schools had fallen 25 votes short.

The echoes from the Sanity Code controversy still reverberate today. There are still notable divisions between the Big 10 and Pac-10 schools and the other “major” conference schools like the SEC. The Ivy League has basically withdrawn from the scene. Even today, there is some distrust of the Big 10 and its closeness (real or perceived) with the NCAA.

Below are some links that touch on this topic. They are mostly links from Google Books, so it may take a little bit of work to get to the referenced sections.

Egg In Your Beer (editorial from the January 21, 1950 edition of The Harvard Crimson)

—

While perusing Google Books, I read a passage from a book entitled Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson: An Oral Biography:

[Thompson’s] best friend from his early days was probably Duke Rice. He was a skinny kid and not all that tall, and suddenly he shot up to six-six or six-seven and got a basketball scholarship to The Citadel, where he was the only player of the time who was able to shut down Jerry West.

Now, this little blurb interested me, for a couple of reasons:

— Thompson’s friend was named Duke Rice. With a name like that, he shouldn’t have gone to The Citadel; he should have gone to Vanderbilt or Northwestern.

— The “Blitz Kids” were a group of players recruited by Norm Sloan to The Citadel in the late 1950s and early 1960s (which is also the time period when Jerry West played for West Virginia). That era was the pinnacle for basketball at The Citadel. The stars of those teams were Art Musselman, Dick Wherry, Ray Graves, and Dick Jones (and later Gary Daniels)…but not anyone named Duke Rice.

The Blitz Kids never won the Southern Conference, mostly because West Virginia was in the league at that time, and Jerry West played for the Mountaineers. He was, of course, a fantastic player. Very few teams shut him down, and The Citadel certainly didn’t. West played three games in his career against The Citadel. WVU won all three games, by scores of 89-61, 85-66, and 98-76.

That 85-66 score came in the 1959 Southern Conference tournament championship game, the only time The Citadel has ever made the league final. West scored 27 points in that contest. I don’t know how many points he scored against the Bulldogs in the other two games, but since the Mountaineers put up 89 and 98 points in those matchups, I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly “shut down”.

Incidentally, that 98-76 game was played during the 1959-60 season at McAlister Field House, and was arguably the most anticipated contest ever played at the ancient armory (at least for those contests not involving Ric Flair). West Virginia had lost in the NCAA championship game the year before (to California, 71-70), and West was the most celebrated college basketball player of his time. People came out in droves to see West play.

West was so good, both in college and in the NBA, that he had no fewer than three great nicknames — “Zeke from Cabin Creek”, “The Logo”, and “Mr. Clutch”. There are a lot of great athletes who would love to have just one cool nickname, and West had (at least) three of them.

Going back to the book, the person who stated that Duke Rice had played for The Citadel was another friend of Thompson’s named Gerald Tyrrell. Now, I was sure Tyrrell didn’t make up that story. After all, there wasn’t any reason for him to do so, and I suspected that part of it was true. It’s just that it was rather obvious that The Citadel part of it wasn’t true.

No one with the last name “Rice” is listed as having lettered for The Citadel in the school’s media guide. I briefly considered the possibility that the last name was incorrect (and that Duke was a childhood nickname), but Hunter S. Thompson grew up in Louisville, and none of the players for The Citadel during that era were from Louisville, at least from what I was able to determine.

As it happened, it didn’t take much effort (just some additional Googling) to come up with the answer. Duke Rice had in fact played college basketball, and had played in the Southern Conference for a school with a military component…but the school in question was Virginia Tech.

Rice is mentioned in this interview of Chris Smith, who starred for the Hokies from 1957-61. Smith described the 1960 Southern Conference championship game:

We had great athletes. Bobby Ayersman, Louie Mills, and Bucky Keller were each outstanding high school football quarterbacks. Dean Blake and Duke Rice did a great job during the game as they took turns guarding Jerry West. They held him to 14 points. When Jerry fouled out in the third quarter, we were tied 49 to 49. Unfortunately, the rest of the WV team responded well and they scored on several long shots during the final 10 minutes of the game.

There he is!

What’s more, it appears that Tyrrell’s comment that Rice was “the only player of his time to shut down Jerry West” has some validity to it. Maybe it’s an overstatement, but at least it’s rooted in fact.

In the end, the Duke Rice story doesn’t really have anything to do with The Citadel. It’s more about a slightly blurry memory (which I suspect Thompson himself would have appreciated) and a lack of fact-checking by the book’s editors. This particular book happens to be co-authored by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner.

It also illustrates the inherent danger of taking oral histories at face value. Anyone who follows baseball knows this all too well. The success of Lawrence Ritter’s classic The Glory Of Their Times has led to a number of similar books, a lot of which are a little short in the truth-telling department.

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It’s time for the Plant of the Week. For this edition, the honoree is a canna lily, the Cleopatra canna, which when it comes to coloration basically has a mind of its own.

At first, I was going to wait for a couple of games to be played before I started posting about The Citadel’s basketball team. I like to do that because I want to see how things are going to shake out in terms of personnel (who is getting the minutes), style of play, etc.

While everyone knows who the key players will be (Cam and Zach!), and who some of the regulars will be (like Austin Dahn and Bryan Streeter), there is still uncertainty about who will be manning other positions and featuring in the rotation. Can Cosmo Morabbi find his shot? Is it true that Matt Clark is going to thrive in the new offensive system? Just how quick is freshman DeVontae Wright? Are the two European-born grad student big guys named Mike any good?

Plus, Chuck Driesell is now the coach, and apparently he wants to play at a quicker tempo than his predecessor, Ed Conroy. In the exhibition victory over North Greenville, the Bulldogs had 71 possessions. In 2010, The Citadel averaged 61.1 possessions per game; in 2009, 64.8 ppg. Of course, it’s only one game, and one that doesn’t count.

However, I decided to make this ramble of a post, because I’m ready for the season to start. If I hadn’t been excited for college hoops season already, Wednesday night’s thriller between Maryland and the College of Charleston would have done the trick anyway. That was a fun game to watch, and also an instructive one for the Bulldogs.

In last season’s two meetings with the CofC, The Citadel did a good job keeping Andrew Goudelock from exploding from beyond the arc. He was a combined 2-14 from 3-land in the two games. The Bulldogs are going to have to do that again this season when they match up against the Cougars. It won’t be easy.

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The Citadel opens its season on the road at Richmond. The Spiders, which run the “Princeton” offense, were very good last season, and are expected to be very good again this year. In 2010 Richmond narrowly missed out on winning the Atlantic 10 regular season title, and then advanced to the league tourney final. The Spiders received an at-large bid to the NCAAs, finishing 26-9 after a first-round loss to St. Mary’s.

Richmond features 2010 A-10 player of the year Kevin Anderson, a 6’0″ guard who averaged nearly 18 points per game last season, and 6’10” NBA prospect Justin Harper, both seniors. They are two of eleven returning scholarship players. Richmond has a bevy of frontcourt players to complement Harper, but must find an outside shooter to replace Daniel Gonzalves, who has graduated. There appear to be several worthy candidates, however.

The Spiders’ only real weakness is on the boards, and it cost them against St. Mary’s, as Gaels big man Omar Samhan had a field day against them. (Of course, 2-seed Villanova couldn’t handle Samhan either.)

There is a lot of anticipation for the upcoming season for Richmond fans, who expect a banner campaign — and it’s hard to blame them for being excited.

As for the game itself, besides Richmond’s talent, I’m a little concerned about the pace of play. If Driesell’s Dogs really are going to be significantly more uptempo this season, then this will be a case of the Spiders wanting to play “slower” than the Bulldogs.

It has been unusual in recent years, of course, for a team to play at a slower pace than The Citadel, but when it has happened it has occasionally thrown the Bulldogs off their game. I remember a bad Iowa team beating The Citadel easily at McAlister Field House two years ago, partly because of its size, and partly because The Citadel seemed flummoxed by the Hawkeyes’ style. The same has sometimes been true when playing Samford, another school that employs the Princeton offense (the 2009 SoCon tourney game still gives me nightmares).

If The Citadel is going to try to occasionally force the action this season, there will be times when the other team wants to slow the game down, and the Bulldogs are going to have to learn how to adjust. Friday night’s game may provide a good test in that respect.

—

Earlier in the summer, it was generally believed that The Citadel would be participating in the Charleston Classic. I was very happy about that, as it would be a chance for the Bulldogs to play good competition early in the season, and possibly on television.

However, at the last minute Wofford was substituted as the SoCon’s representative in the tournament. I was less than thrilled about that, and am even less thrilled now, because it’s my understanding that The Citadel elected not to play in the tournament after originally agreeing to do so. Ed Conroy was game, but Chuck Driesell was apparently not interested.

I’m sure he had a good reason, but I would like to know what that reason was. The Charleston Classic is an ESPN tournament, and will get its fair share of promotion from the four-letter. In addition, at least two (if not all three) of the games The Citadel would have played in the tourney would have been on television.

There is nothing more frustrating than having a billion college basketball games on television, and almost none of them featuring your team. This season, The Citadel will apparently only appear on television three times — on SportSouth (at the College of Charleston), on FSN-Rocky Mountain against Colorado, and on KASY-TV, which will carry the game against New Mexico (but which probably won’t be on Full Court, and thus will be unavailable outside the Albuquerque area).

The Citadel should have (at the very least) a competitive team this year, one that merits as much promotion and coverage as it can handle. As it is, the Bulldogs are so anonymous that the mammoth College Basketball Prospectusforgot to include The Citadel in its publication, the only one of 345 Division I programs to be left out.

The Bulldogs aren’t playing in next season’s Charleston Classic either (oddly, no SoCon school is). Maybe The Citadel is holding out for another chance to play in a ballroom in Cancun…

—

I’ll close this post by throwing in a few links:

— Richmond game notes (.pdf): Notice that Chuck Driesell’s name is misspelled. Also, it would have been nice if UR had referred to “The Citadel” on its cover page, but considering we can’t get the name right on our uniforms, I can’t complain about another school failing to do so.

— Here is an article on Tulane’s exhibition victory over Loyola of New Orleans. I’m only linking it because I’m a little puzzled about Ben Cherry being eligible. More power to him.

— The “holy grail” for The Citadel’s basketball program, of course, is the NCAA Tournament. For those unaware of how difficult this task has been for the Bulldogs, my manifesto from two seasons ago (slightly outdated but still mostly relevant): Link

— Do you remember how a feature story on Ed Conroy and the Bulldogs almost alwayswound up being about Pat Conroy? Of course you do. Well, prepare for more of the same, as scribes writing about Chuck Driesell and The Citadel will often revert to telling stories about Lefty.

Congrats on being named head coach at The Citadel. I liked your choice of tie at the press conference. You and your family will enjoy Charleston. Whether or not you enjoy your new job will depend on how you approach it. Here are some tips:

— Know your history. I assume Larry Leckonby told you all about The Citadel’s hoops past. If not, here is a primer: Link

I hope you’re not having second thoughts…

Now, that post in the link covers everything up to Ed Conroy’s last two years at The Citadel, which were really good by Bulldog standards. Conroy won 20 games in 2009 and went 16-16 this past season; he parlayed that into a nice gig at Tulane. This is good news for you, Chuck, if you have designs on moving up the D-1 coaching ladder. Imagine if you actually won the Southern Conference. That might be worth an ACC job.

(Who am I kidding. That would be worth an NBA job.)

— If you want to make the NCAAs from The Citadel, you will have to win the Southern Conference tournament. The Southern Conference is a one-bid league; there hasn’t been an at-large bid out of the SoCon since 1950.

Winning the SoCon tourney while at The Citadel will be a tall order, however. The school’s postseason tournament history? Ugly.

Now, you remember your father’s struggles in the ACC tournament, so you can appreciate a tourney hex — maybe not one quite on the scale of The Citadel’s foibles at the SoCon tourney, but you probably understand the frustration. Of course, you also were on the team the year Lefty finally won the ACC tourney, so you know it’s possible to climb the mountain. Admittedly, you aren’t going to have the services of anyone as talented as Len Bias while at The Citadel.

— Speaking of the left-hander, feel free to invite your father to show up at McAlister Field House whenever he wants. We’re used to celebrities with connections to the program showing up at basketball games now, since Pat Conroy jumped on the bandwagon the last two seasons. All I ask is that whenever there is an article in The New York Times about the team’s success, or if Wright Thompson writes a long, thoughtful piece on ESPN.com about the basketball program, that maybe the stories might actually mention a current player. Just once?

It’s like the program got overshadowed by an ancillary figure. 5700 combined words, no mention of any player. Sigh.

(By the way, there has to be a great photo op involving General (the bulldog, not Rosa) and Lefty Driesell. Russ Pace, be ready.)

— Learn as much as you can about The Citadel, but don’t sweat it if you don’t understand everything about the school. I’m a graduate, and I do not understand everything about the place, and never will. If you really understand everything about The Citadel, you are certifiably insane.

One thing I will say is that you can’t quite lean on your time in the Navy, or at NAPS. There are some similarities but also some major differences.

You’re going to have to get a crash course in a new culture from somebody who was recently in your situation (Leckonby), and you should seriously consider having at least one guy on your staff with connections to the school. It’s kind of like having an interpreter.

— You have a reputation as a solid talent evaluator. I’m glad to hear that is the case, because I think that skill is critical to having success at The Citadel, much more so than just being a “getter” of players. You’re going to have to look for under-the-radar types.

I’ll give you an example, Chuck. Remember when Maryland was recruiting Jai Lucas? Of course you do, you were front and center on that recruitment. Maryland didn’t get him, though, which must have been very disappointing, especially with his father (the great John Lucas) having played for your father at Maryland.

Jai Lucas wound up going to Florida, and then later transferred to Texas. He was a big-time recruit. Big-time recruits don’t go to The Citadel.

When you were watching his high school games, though, did you happen to notice the other guard for Bellaire? Skinny kid, but a solid player. Wasn’t getting offers from any of the high-majors, or any of the mid-majors for that matter. I’m guessing you noticed him, at least enough to recognize him…even if you saw him now, in his cadet uniform.

His name was and is Cameron Wells, and he’s currently on pace to be the all-time leading scorer at The Citadel. I would argue that he has had a much better college career than Jai Lucas, and that’s even taking the level of competition into consideration. That’s the type of player you are seeking. Wells wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American, but it’s not inconceivable he could eventually become the first alum from The Citadel to play in the NBA.

— Besides finding “hidden” talent, Chuck, there is something else you need to keep in mind, something very important, and something quite a few coaches at The Citadel have found out the hard way. When you recruit, you have to recruit cadets and make them players. You can’t recruit players and make them cadets.

You have to bring in guys who are willing to embrace the challenge that is The Citadel. That’s what you’re selling, basically — a unique challenge, one that will stay with you all your life, along with a scholarship and the opportunity to play D-1 basketball.

It isn’t easy. No matter how good a salesman you are, The Citadel is never going to become the UCLA of the East.

The key to long-term success for any coach of any sport at The Citadel is to keep attrition low. I can’t emphasize that enough. You have to develop players over a four-year period. It doesn’t do you any good to recruit some on-court stud if he’s only around for a year or two because he can’t handle the military system.

Also, remember to work with the system, not against it. Don’t enable your players at the expense of the military side of things, as it will do you no good and will turn the corps of cadets (and a significant number of alumni) against you. You need to have the corps on your side.

That line you had at the presser about players “taking that experience [of The Citadel’s military system] to the court” — that was solid, Chuck. You at least talked a good game there.

— Speaking of the corps of cadets, you need to confer with Leckonby and General Rosa and some of the cadet leadership to figure out how to make McAlister Field House a decided homecourt advantage again. It wasn’t last season, and that’s a concern, because in the SoCon, you need to defend your homecourt.

The big problem is that league games are usually played on Thursdays and Saturdays. On Saturday, the corps is generally on leave, and a leave that is both much-anticipated and much-needed. On Thursday nights, you have a combination of things working against you, but I think you can work with the corps on that night.

See if you can arrange it so that a minimum of one-fourth (or at least one-fifth) of the corps is in attendance on Thursday nights, at least for SoCon games. Saturday is a tough nut to crack; at the very least, make sure cadets stuck on campus are at the games. Try to get cadets some rewards for supporting the team.

You have to understand, Chuck, that by and large cadets at The Citadel are not sports fans. At Maryland, you could count on a large student body with a healthy number of hoops nuts. You had a built-in student fan base. That isn’t the case at The Citadel, with just over 2000 members of the corps of cadets, only a very small percentage of whom grew up following college basketball on any level.

— That’s why, Chuck, you also need to reach out to the community. In terms of selling the program to outsiders, you’re going to have to be a little bit more like your father, I think. You’re competing with a lot of entertainment options, and Charleston is not really a sports town. However, it’s something you have to do. The Citadel has one of the oldest fan bases in the league, if not the country. You need to find some fresh blood.

— This is sort of an aside, Chuck, but I wanted to warn you in advance about Southern Conference officiating. It can be, uh, inconsistent. This is particularly true on Saturdays, when all the high-profile officials are working major-conference games.

Weekday games usually aren’t so bad, because there is sometimes a quality ref or two available for SoCon games. Saturdays, though, are often just short of an officiating debacle (actually, last season’s Davidson-Wofford game in Spartanburg was a debacle).

It’s just another reason why you need to have a good, boisterous crowd at McAlister for Saturday night games.

— Also, if you don’t mind, I would like for you to fix the uniforms. The next time we break out new duds, please be sure that the lettering on them reads “The Citadel” and not “Citadel”. It’s a pet peeve of mine, but still. Get the name of the school right. I bet General Grimsley would shake your hand if you made a point of correcting that, and it’s always good to be on the right side of the Grimmer.

— Your predecessor, Ed Conroy, made a point of scheduling quality non-conference opposition, with occasional home games against the likes of Michigan State and Southern California. I really liked this approach, and hope that you keep doing it. You probably are going to have to play two or three “guarantee” games at a minimum every year, anyway.

With that in mind, Chuck, see if you can schedule games against Big 10 and/or SEC opponents. Every Big 10 home game is televised on the Big Ten Network (BTN), and many of the SEC games are on one of the various ESPN platforms. Even a game on ESPN3.com is worth it for The Citadel.

Last season the Bulldogs were on television a grand total of three times, once on ESPNU and twice on SportSouth. To raise the profile of the program, and for recruiting purposes, I think it’s important to get on TV as much as possible. Besides, if we’re going to play elite teams to pay the bills, we might as well get something else out of it other than cash.

— You are going to be in an unusual situation at The Citadel for a new coach, in that you will be inheriting a team that has the potential to be good next season. I already mentioned Cameron Wells, but you have several other excellent players with whom to work.

At the press conference you mentioned that next season’s team could be “very special”. I was interested in the way you described the number of returning starters. Instead of saying that “all five starters will be back,” you noted that (I’m paraphrasing slightly) “at the end of the season all five starters were coming back.”

There have been some rumblings that at least a couple of players are considering leaving the school, including two regulars in the rotation, so your first recruiting job is going to be trying to keep them from bolting. It appears you are well aware of this, which is good. I hope they stay, as if everyone comes back next season really could be special.

Despite the expectations for next year, you won’t really be under any pressure to win immediately, and can think long-term. Ed Conroy left for a better job after four seasons. The three coaches before him had a combined winning percentage of 41.2%, but despite that coached for 11 (Les Robinson), 7 (Randy Nesbit), and 14 (Pat Dennis) seasons at The Citadel.

The job isn’t a career-killer like it’s occasionally been made out to be. Four of the last eight coaches, in fact, left to coach other Division I schools; one of them, Norm Sloan, would later win the national title. Sloan and Robinson would actually coach two other D-1 schools after leaving The Citadel (counting Sloan’s two stops at Florida just once).

—

Congrats again for getting your first shot as a D-1 head coach, Coach Driesell. Your opportunity comes at a place that is unusual and not for the faint of heart, but very special nonetheless. Cherish the experience.

Last year, I wrote about The Citadel’s abysmal record in the Southern Conference tournament. The next few paragraphs are an updated version of that piece. Feel free to ignore them if you have a weak stomach. The preview for this year’s tournament (from The Citadel’s perspective) follows the history lesson.

—

One of the more curious things about The Citadel’s wretched history in the SoCon tourney is that there is no firm answer to just how many times the school has lost in the event. That’s because the league has mutated so many times there is a dispute as to what year the first “official” conference tournament was held.

Before 1920, The Citadel was one of many schools in a rather loose confederation known as the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. (The Citadel initially joined in 1909.) There were about 30 colleges in the SIAA by 1920, including almost every member of the current SEC and about half of the current ACC, along with schools such as Centre, Sewanee (later a member of the SEC — seriously!), Chattanooga, Wofford, Howard (now called Samford, of course), and Millsaps, just to name a few. As you might imagine, the large and disparate membership had some disagreements, and was just plain hard to manage, so a number of the schools left to form the Southern Conference in late 1920.

In the spring of 1921, the SIAA sponsored a basketball tournament, which would be the forerunner to all the conference hoops tourneys to follow. Any southern college or university could travel to Atlanta to play, and fifteen schools did just that. Kentucky beat Georgia in the final. The Citadel did not enter the event, but several other small colleges did, including Newberry (for those unfamiliar with Newberry, it’s a tiny school located in central South Carolina). The tournament featured teams from the new Southern Conference, the old SIAA, and squads like Newberry, which wasn’t in either league (it would join the SIAA in 1923).

In 1922 the SIAA held another tournament in Atlanta, this one won by North Carolina, which beat Mercer in the final. The Citadel entered this time, losing in the first round to Vanderbilt. The SIAA tournament remained all-comers until 1924, when it was restricted to Southern Conference members.

Some sources suggest that the 1921 tournament is the first “official” Southern Conference tournament, some go with the 1922 event, and others argue for 1924. From what I can tell, the league itself is a bit wishy-washy on the issue. On the conference website, it states:

The first Southern Conference Championship was the league basketball tournament held in Atlanta in 1922. The North Carolina Tar Heels won the tournament to become the first recognized league champion in any sport. The Southern Conference Tournament remains the oldest of its kind in college basketball.

That’s great, but the conference’s own record book lists Kentucky as having won the first tournament title in 1921 (on page 113; oddly, that year is excluded from the game-by-game tournament results that begin on page 114). Of course, the edition of the record book on the conference website is several years old and lists The Citadel as having once lost 37 straight games, which is incorrect, so take it for what you will.

Personally, I think that the idea of having a conference tournament is to determine a league champion, and it stands to reason that such a tournament would only include league members. So the first “real” Southern Conference tournament, in my opinion, was held in 1924.

There is a point to this, trust me. The difference between counting the Vanderbilt loss as a SoCon tourney loss and not counting it is the difference between The Citadel’s alltime record in the event being 10-56 or 10-57. Not that they both aren’t hideous totals, but as of now The Citadel shares the NCAA record for “most consecutive conference tournament appearances without a title” with Clemson, which is 0-for-56 in trying to win the ACC tournament. Counting the Vanderbilt game would mean The Citadel is alone in its conference tourney infamy. No offense to the Tigers, but I don’t believe the 1922 game should count, because it wasn’t really a Southern Conference tournament game.

By the way, you read that right. The Citadel is 10-56 alltime in the SoCon tournament. That’s just unbelievably bad. It comes out to a 15% winning percentage, which is more than twice as bad as even The Citadel’s lousy alltime conference regular season winning percentage (35%). The Citadel lost 17 straight tourney games from 1961-78, and then from 1985-97 lost 13 more in a row.

Tangent: The single-game scoring record in the tournament is held by Marshall’s Skip Henderson, who put up 55 on The Citadel in 1988 in a game Marshall won by 43 points. The next night the Thundering Herd, which had won the regular season title that year, lost to UT-Chattanooga by one point. Karma.

Those long losing streaks didn’t occur in consecutive years, as The Citadel didn’t always qualify for the tournament, particularly in the years before 1953, when there were up to 17 teams in the league at any given time, and only the top squads played in the tourney. The Citadel’s first “real” appearance, in 1938, resulted in a 42-38 loss to Maryland.

The Citadel would lose two more tourney openers before winning its first game in 1943, against South Carolina. That would be the only time the Bulldogs and Gamecocks faced each other in the tournament, and so South Carolina is one of two teams The Citadel has a winning record against in SoCon tourney play (the Bulldogs are 2-0 against VMI).

The next time The Citadel would win a game in the tournament? 1959, when the Bulldogs actually won two games, against Furman and George Washington, and found themselves in the tourney final. Unfortunately, the opponent in the title game was West Virginia, led by Jerry West. West scored 27 points and the Mountaineers pulled away late for an 85-66 victory. This would be the only time The Citadel ever made the championship game; it’s also the only time the Bulldogs won two games in the tournament.

After a 1961 quarterfinal victory over Richmond, The Citadel would not win another tournament game until 1979, when the Bulldogs defeated Davidson before losing to Furman. The game against Davidson was played at McAlister Field House and was the final victory of a 20-win campaign, the school’s first.

The Citadel would win single games in 1982 and 1985 before going winless until 1998, when it finally broke a 13-game tourney losing streak by beating VMI. The Keydets would be the next victim as well, in 2002, and were apparently so embarrassed they left the league. The Citadel’s latest win in conference tournament action came in 2006 against Furman.

Twenty-one different schools have defeated The Citadel in tournament play, with Davidson’s eight victories leading the way (against one loss to the Bulldogs). East Tennessee State went 6-0 against The Citadel while in the league.

Ed Conroy is 0-3 in the SoCon tourney as head coach of The Citadel (he was also 0-4 as a player). If The Citadel were to win its conference tournament opener against Samford, and then lose the next day to Appalachian State, Conroy’s record would improve to 1-4. That would be the second-highest winning percentage in the tournament for a Bulldog coach since the days of Norm Sloan.

Sloan was 2-4 in the tourney; his successor, Mel Thompson, won his first tournament game as head coach. He would never win another, finishing with a record of 1-6. Dick Campbell was 0-4. George Hill was 0-3. Les Robinson was 3-10 (a record which by winning percentage leads all of the post-Sloan coaches). Randy Nesbit was 0-7. Pat Dennis was 3-14.

(By the way, the best record for a Bulldog coach in SoCon tourney play is that of Bo Sherman, who went 1-1 in 1943, his lone season in charge. Sherman’s Bulldogs defeated South Carolina before losing to Duke.)

The Citadel’s record against current SoCon teams in the tournament: Furman 2-5, UT-Chattanooga 0-1, Elon 0-1, Samford 0-1, College of Charleston 0-1, Georgia Southern 0-2, Western Carolina 1-1, Appalachian State 1-6, Davidson 1-8. (The Citadel has never played Wofford or UNC-Greensboro in the tournament.)

—

Last season The Citadel was flying high, having won 20 games for only the second time ever, and had high hopes entering the tournament. Those hopes came crashing down against Samford, a team The Citadel had defeated by 25 points during the regular season. Samford’s patient, Princeton-style offense scored 76 points on only 55 possessions, as the Birmingham Bulldogs got off to a great start and never really let The Citadel into the game. It was a very disappointing finish to an otherwise outstanding season.

This season The Citadel appeared on the verge of making a nice run into the SoCon tourney, having reeled off five straight victories, and needing just one more to clinch a winning season, both overall and in league play. It didn’t happen, though, as the Bulldogs lost their last three games. The loss at Furman, in particular, was very poor. The Citadel is now 15-15 for this year’s campaign, and would have to win at least two games in the tourney to garner its first back-to-back winning campaigns since 1980.

Instead of a bye into the quarterfinals, The Citadel finds itself playing in the first round on Friday, finishing as the 4th seed in the South division. Friday’s opponent, Samford, struggled to an 11-19 record (5-13 SoCon) and is the 5th seed from the North division. The winner will play Appalachian State, which finished first in the North, on Saturday night.

The two teams met twice during the regular season, with The Citadel winning both games. The first game, played in Birmingham on January 16, was the definition of slow tempo, with The Citadel’s patient motion offense (61.4 possessions per game, 8th slowest nationally) outlasting Samford’s Princeton-style attack (58.1 possessions per game, slowest in the country).

The cadets had but 51 possessions in the contest, and made just enough of them count to prevail 51-50. Cameron Wells had 19 points, while Austin Dahn had 17 (making 4 three-pointers). For Samford, Bryan Friday and Andy King combined for 28 points. The Citadel’s edge on the boards (26-20) proved critical.

In the rematch in Charleston, Samford led by 10 points with less than 10 minutes to play but was unable to hold on, thanks to a fine outside shooting performance in the second half by The Citadel. Freshman Ben Cherry had his best game of the season with 3 three-pointers, including two big shots late in the game.

Austin Dahn, who had made 4 three-pointers in the first meeting, hit four more in the second game to finish with 15 points and offset a poor shooting night for Wells (2-10 FG). Harrison DuPont added 13 points and 7 rebounds, good enough to survive an excellent game by Samford’s Josh Davis (24 points on only 11 FG attempts). The Citadel had 54 possessions in that game.

For The Citadel, the key to beating Samford for a third time this season is confidence. Last year in the tournament game, Samford ran out to an early lead. I think The Citadel’s players got a little nervous, especially because trying to play from behind against a team as patient as Samford can be very frustrating (just like it can be for teams playing The Citadel). The fact that the game was an elimination game in tournament play just exacerbated the tension.

It cannot help that The Citadel has no history of success in the SoCon tourney on which to build. That is why I think it is important for the Bulldogs to win this game. Even if The Citadel does not go on to win the tournament (winning four games in four days is extremely unlikely), enjoying just a taste of victory in the tourney may go a long way next season, when The Citadel figures to field a squad capable of contending for the SoCon title. This current crop of players needs to know it can win games in the tournament.

One thing working in The Citadel’s favor is that while it has lost three straight games, so has Samford. Also, while Cameron Wells did not shoot well in the latter part of the season, he was 10-16 from the field in the season finale against Wofford. That bodes well for the Bulldogs, which will need point production from Wells in the tournament.

The Citadel needs to start well, maintain its confidence, and not spend the whole night in “here we go again” mode.

If the Bulldogs advance, the next opponent would be Appalachian State, a team The Citadel defeated 62-58 in Boone early in the season. Appy star Donald Sims scored 22 points, but got no help from his teammates, none of whom scored more than 7 points, while Wells had 21 and Dahn 14 for the Bulldogs. Since then, the Mountaineers have fashioned an excellent season, and if not for the draw would be my pick to win the league tournament.

Wofford won the regular season and has the best draw, and I suppose should be the favorite, but for some reason I’m not quite convinced the Terriers have what it takes to win three straight games in three days.

It should be an interesting four days in Charlotte. It would be nice if The Citadel added to the interest.

I’m going to discuss the actual basketball played by The Citadel over the past week and a half, including some statistics. Before I do that, though, I’m going to mention some other statistics…about officials.

On Monday night The Citadel hosted Michigan State at McAlister Field House. It was good of Tom Izzo to honor a commitment to play the game in Charleston (West Virginia decided to buy its way out of a trip), but I’m guessing he did ask for some big-time officials to work the game, just to make sure that the lead referee wasn’t General Rosa’s brother or something. That’s fine, and as a result the game was officiated by Karl Hess, Jamie Luckie, and Mike Wood.

If you follow college basketball at all, you probably recognize those names, because they are on television all the time, working games from coast to coast. They’re certainly on TV more than The Citadel (the MSU game will be the only nationally televised game this season to feature the Bulldogs).

Mike Wood has actually worked five games in Charleston so far this season, a bit of an oddity. He called three games at the Charleston Classic, and then worked the Thursday night game between Davidson and The Citadel. Wood has called two games involving Davidson and two involving Penn State, and all four games were played in Charleston. He probably did a lot of Christmas shopping on King Street, but he didn’t do any the weekend between the Davidson and MSU games.

No, on the Saturday after the Davidson game Wood worked the Arkansas Pine Bluff-Michigan game in Ann Arbor; he then flew to Tallahassee to call the Florida International-Florida State game on Sunday before venturing back to Charleston. The game between the Spartans and Bulldogs was Wood’s 19th of the season.

Wood actually hasn’t worked as many games as either of his Monday night colleagues. Both Karl Hess and Jamie Luckie were working their 21st game of the season that night. Hess had been in Washington, DC, on Sunday, calling Villanova-Maryland; the game in Charleston was his fourth in four days and his seventh in eight days. However, Luckie had actually been a touch busier, as he was calling his tenth game in eleven days. Luckie had been in Blacksburg on Sunday to call Georgia-Virginia Tech.

In terms of number of games officiated, the contrast between those three officials and the trio who worked the game on Saturday between Georgia Southern and The Citadel is stark. Bill Cheek, John Corio, and Robert Robinson combined have worked only eleven games, just more than half of the total worked by Luckie (and Hess) alone.

This leads me to mention the difference in officiating in lower-echelon conferences between games played on weekdays and those on weekends. During the week, there aren’t as many games played every night, because there are five days in which most schools will play just once. However, on weekends there are obviously just two days, and most schools play on either Saturday or Sunday.

The big-time officials follow the money, naturally, and the BCS leagues have the most money, so guys like Hess and Wood will work ACC or Big East games during the weekend, leaving lower-profile officials for leagues like the SoCon or the Big South. On weeknights, it’s different; you might see one of those guys or some other TV-star ref working in the smaller conferences, because there aren’t as many games in the larger conferences on that particular night.

The quality of officiating in leagues like the Southern Conference is thus wildly variable, depending on what day a game is played. I think this is a problem. I don’t believe it’s a good idea for some of these guys to work so many games, either, although I can’t really fault them for doing so — they’re independent contractors, trying to make a living.

What I would like to see is a system where a league like the SoCon can count on at least one quality veteran ref for all of its games. This would probably mean the NCAA would have to get involved, which I realize wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing, but ultimately I think there needs to be an adjustment made in the way officials are assigned to contests.

—

The first game in the recent five-game homestand for The Citadel was a 69-37 pummeling of UVA-Wise, an NAIA school that was no match for the Bulldogs. The game didn’t really do much for The Citadel, although it’s a win, and every win counts. The defense was excellent throughout; the offense was okay but not great. Not much else to say about that game, really.

The next night, The Citadel defeated Central Connecticut State 67-53, pulling away late in the contest. This was a slowly-paced game (CCSU had only 53 possessions) in which the Blue Devils played zone and dared the Bulldogs to beat them from outside. CCSU actually led at halftime, but the strategy couldn’t hold up for 40 minutes.

Zach Urbanus was 7-13 from beyond the arc, and Cosmo Morabbi added four three-pointers of his own. Cameron Wells had nine assists against only one turnover. Statistically, the defense for the Bulldogs was average; perhaps playing the second game of a back-to-backer was an issue. The Citadel also got lucky (or rather, CCSU was unlucky) in that Devil starting guard Shemik Thompson was injured and unable to play.

On Saturday, The Citadel got blitzed by a barrage of three-pointers by Davidson and lost, 74-61. The Wildcats scored 74 points in only 61 possessions, which isn’t easy to do, but then again converting 15 three-pointers during a game isn’t easy to do either. Six of those shots from beyond the arc came from William Archambault, who two nights later against the College of Charleston would go 0-5 from three-point land. Against The Citadel, Davidson shot 56% from outside the line; against the Cougars the Wildcats were 4-24.

I thought The Citadel didn’t defend that badly along the perimeter, but Davidson made its shots anyway. That kind of thing happens sometimes, and you just hope that if it happens to your team, that the squad is good enough to hang on against the onslaught and survive. Michigan State faced something similar in the early going against the Bulldogs (when five different players hit three-pointers before the first TV timeout), but MSU’s clear physical superiority eventually won out. The Citadel doesn’t have the luxury of a margin for error, though.

Georgia Southern is rebuilding under new coach Charlton Young, and he’s got a bit of a job to do. GSU has little size (at least, among its regulars in the rotation) and doesn’t shoot well from outside. Thus, Young and the Eagles try to scramble the game. However, against The Citadel all that scrambling resulted in only eight turnovers by the Bulldogs. The Citadel ran its offense well, got plenty of open looks from outside and was 10-22 from three-land. The Eagles, on the other hand, committed twenty turnovers and made only three shots from beyond the arc.

None of those made three-pointers for The Citadel came from Joe Wolfinger, as the 7-footer seemed out of place in the game and only played eleven minutes. Another interesting move in the game was to bring Austin Dahn and Bryan Streeter off the bench. This decision seemed to work, particularly for Dahn, who played fewer minutes than his norm but was more effective offensively. Both players against came off the bench against Michigan State, too (with Cosmo Morabbi and Matt Clark starting).

As a starter, Dahn is 5-32 from 3-point land. In two games as a sub, he is 4-9. Sample size and all that, but if Dahn comes out of long shooting slump, The Citadel is a much better team, one that will be very hard for SoCon opponents to handle from an offensive perspective.

The final game of the homestand (not counting the exhibition game against Allen on Dec. 16) was the much-anticipated clash with Michigan State, live and in color on ESPNU (and in HD, unless you have DirecTV). I was glad to see the crowd in full voice for the game, with a healthy contingent of the corps present and creating havoc. I think most of the MSU players got a kick out of the atmosphere (Izzo certainly did). The TV announcers seemed to enjoy working the game, too (Mark Gottfried referred to people “hanging from the rafters” at least three times).

Tangent: I wish that type of atmosphere was the norm, or at least close to the norm, at McAlister. The key to it being so, of course, is the corps of cadets. There is always a hardy group of cadets at home games, often patrolling one of the baselines, but there aren’t enough of them. As someone who regularly attended basketball games while a cadet, I find this somewhat frustrating.

When I was in school, the cadets usually at the games were either A) football/baseball players, B) all-around sports fans (not many of those at The Citadel), and C) native New Yorkers. Okay, that last one is a semi-exaggeration, but there were several guys from points north who had grown up on college basketball (rooting for the likes of Iona or Seton Hall) and enjoyed getting a “fix” at McAlister. They were world-class hecklers, too. No opponent was ever safe at a shootaround, that’s for sure.

One cool thing that happened at the Davidson game was that one of the trainers gave away some old warmups to the cadets assembled along the baseline. I thought that was a nice gesture.

I would like for someone (administration, leadership within the corps, whoever) to come up with a way to ensure that at least one-fourth of the cadets attend every home game. Really, it should be more than that, but I’ll settle for one-fourth right now.

The Citadel got off to the aforementioned hot start against the Spartans and finished 12-20 from beyond the arc. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs were only 7-29 inside the arc, which tells you which team dominated the paint (and the glass; MSU outrebounded The Citadel 35-16). The Spartans also took 19 more free throws than the Bulldogs (two of those were by Derrick Nix, who went 0-2 and is now an almost impossible 1-19 from the free throw line for the season).

—

A few odds and ends, observations, etc.:

— Number of possessions for the five games, in order: 67, 55, 66, 61, 57. Considering that the UVA-Wise game (67 possessions) was a blowout, and that the Davidson game (66) was one in which The Citadel had to increase the number of possessions because it was trailing, I think the team’s pace of play is just about where it needs to be. Fewer than ten teams nationally play at a slower tempo.

— After 11 games, The Citadel is 6-5. After 11 games last season, The Citadel was 5-6. Incidentally, Michigan State was the eleventh game in both seasons.

— I think it’s fairly clear after eleven games that Joe Wolfinger isn’t going to be a “like for like” substitute for Demetrius Nelson. Just some raw stats from the first nine games against Division I opponents: Wolfinger has 84 shot attempts, with 33 coming from beyond the arc, and 18 free throw attempts, while Nelson had 62 shot attempts, none of them from 3-land, and 33 free throw attempts. Wolfinger has 52 rebounds (15 offensive) and 13 turnovers, while Nelson had 42 rebounds (16 offensive) and 19 turnovers.

Nelson got better as the season progressed (and also started taking more shots), and Wolfinger certainly has the potential to do so as well. I think the above stats show that he needs to do a slightly better job grabbing offensive boards, and part of that has to do with shot selection — namely, his.

When Wolfinger is shooting the three, The Citadel’s tallest player isn’t under the basket to grab an offensive rebound. He’s obviously an excellent shooter for his size, but he probably needs to be a bit more judicious about when to shoot. He also is going to have lots of chances to pass out of the post and pick up assists as the season goes on; he only has two assists so far.

There is definitely something to be said, however, about having a big man who is capable of having a big night from three-land. It’s disorienting (and sometimes disheartening) for an opponent when he converts those jumpers, and also opens up a lot of things for the other offensive players.

— Twelve different players have seen significant time in at least one game this season. Bo Holston followed up a DNP against Davidson with 20+ minute performances against both Georgia Southern and Michigan State. Mike Groselle has looked very good in spot duty, but is currently struggling with a bad ankle, which just means he could play quarterback for The Citadel. Ben Cherry and Daniel Eykyn have both had their moments, as has the Midwest City Masked Man, Harrison Dupont.

Basically, if you’re in uniform, be ready for action, because you never know when Ed Conroy is going to wave you into the game. I guess there is a reason the Bulldogs have so many players on the roster…

— The Citadel is shooting 37.9% from 3-point land, currently second-best in the conference and in the top 70 nationally. The Bulldogs average only 10.8 turnovers per game, 11th-best in the country, although part of that is due to a lack of possessions. However, The Citadel’s turnover rate is still solid, as is its assist-to-turnover ratio and assist-to-made-basket ratio (top 75 overall in all three statistics).

The Citadel commits just 14.4 fouls per game, which is in the top 10 nationally (and was even better before being called for 18 fouls against Michigan State; in that game Cosmo Morabbi was a very unlucky foul magnet).

What are things that need improvement? Three point defense, for one. Davidson wasn’t the only team to make more than its fair share of three-pointers against the Bulldogs; at 39.5% against, The Citadel is in the bottom 50 nationally in that category. The Bulldogs also need to improve their rebounding (particularly on the offensive glass) and force a few more turnovers, as opponents are averaging only 12.1 per game (although part of that, again, is a function of tempo).

On Thursday afternoon the NCAA issued a press release entitled “Executive Committee adopts wagering policy”. Included was the following statement:

“No predetermined or non-predetermined session of an NCAA championship may be conducted in a state with legal wagering that is based upon single-game betting (high school, college or professional) in a sport in which the NCAA conducts a championship.”

Single-game betting is defined as wagering that involves either a money line or point-spread wager. The recommended policy would not apply to those states that may offer parlay betting, lottery tickets or sports pools/pull tabs.

What this apparently means is that effective immediately, schools in Delaware and Nevada will no longer be able to host any postseason NCAA events. This includes even those events for which they would have qualified to host by merit.

The policy change will result in the University of Delaware not being able to host an FCS playoff game. Also affected in that state is Wesley College, which has an excellent football program at the Division III level. Delaware is a perennial FCS power that has hosted 22 postseason football games, while Wesley has hosted eight Division III playoff games. The Blue Hens and Wolverines have each hosted playoff games as recently as 2007.

The University of Nevada-Reno hosted a skiing regional in March and has the capability of hosting other regionals in sports like volleyball, basketball, and baseball. The opportunity to host those regionals is now off the table for that school (as it is for UNLV).

Faring a little better than Nevada and Delaware were the state schools in Montana. There was a fear that the NCAA’s stance would also prohibit events from being held in that state, but the new policy allows sports pools (as opposed to single-game betting), so Montana avoided getting the Nevada/Delaware “treatment”. This led to a predictably mealy-mouthed response from the Montana state attorney general:

“I applaud the NCAA for coming to a commonsense conclusion that preserves Montana’s right to host playoff and tournament games,” Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock said in a prepared statement. “Montana wholeheartedly supports its student athletes. Along with the NCAA, we remain committed to protecting the integrity of collegiate sports.”

What he is really applauding, of course, is that part about Montana (or Montana State) still getting to host playoff games. He surely can’t serious in supporting the NCAA’s “commonsense conclusion”, since there isn’t anything sensible about it.

Look, I understand the NCAA’s concern about this issue. There are two points, though, that need to be made.

1) It isn’t the fault of the schools. The colleges and universities in Nevada and Delaware have nothing to do with the gambling laws in those states, and can’t do anything about those laws anyway. Why punish the student-athletes and institutions for something over which they have no control?

The NCAA presumably is hoping that this new policy will cause the politicians in the state of Delaware to reverse themselves (I can’t imagine even the NCAA thinks things will change in Nevada), but the organization has to know that losing an occasional playoff game is not going to be enough to stop the state from instituting single-game betting. The legislation passed easily in both houses of the Delaware state legislature. The state is hoping to generate more than $50 million in revenue from sports betting in the first year of implementation alone. I’m afraid a playoff game against Southern Illinois or Northern Iowa isn’t going to make that kind of cash.

A cynic might think that the NCAA is punishing its member schools in the states because, well, they are the only entities that the NCAA can punish. It’s like a version of the old Jerry Tarkanian line, “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky it gave Cleveland State two more years of probation.”

2) There have been plenty of schools with gambling scandals from states with no state-sponsored gambling. Toledo, Northwestern, Florida, Maryland, Rhode Island, Maine, and Arizona State (just to name a few) all had serious gambling incidents involving student-athletes just in the last two decades. What Delaware is going to do won’t matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

That is what really upset Nevada-Reno director of athletics Cary Groth. As she put it:

“It’s outrageous,” Groth said. “Having worked in a non-betting state, in Illinois, it was more of an issue for us to monitor betting for our student-athletes than it is here at Nevada because there’s so much more awareness (here)…All anybody has to do is get on the Internet, or pick up the phone, to place a bet (anywhere in the U.S.).”

Groth added something else, just to stir the pot a little more:

“The NCAA has become such a monopoly on so many things, it’s not right,” Groth said, adding all states affected by the ban are home to non-Bowl Championship Series schools.

I think another hot-button issue (at least, hot-button to the NCAA) is going to be affected by this policy, too. The “non-predetermined” aspect of the ban will surely come to the attention of (among others) the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP. As Tom Yeager, commissioner of the CAA, put it in an article written three weeks ago about the Delaware situation:

[Yeager compared] the wagering policy to the NCAA’s stance on South Carolina and Mississippi still flying the Confederate flag.The NCAA allows schools in those states to earn the right to host an NCAA championship event. Clemson, in South Carolina, hosted a recent baseball playoff. But the state would not be awarded a predetermined host role for a larger event, such as an NCAA basketball tournament regional.

Yeager argued that the wagering policy should not be any more stern.

“We continue to support the stand the NCAA has taken but also recognize that member institutions really aren’t part of a fight and shouldn’t be disadvantaged when having earned the right to host [NCAA] games on their campuses,” Yeager said.

It’s hard to argue with Yeager’s last point in particular (member institutions are just bystanders when it comes to these issues). It’s also not unreasonable to suggest that if the NCAA is going to ban hosting even when merited for the likes of Delaware State or UNLV, the same principle presumably should apply to Mississippi State or Clemson. The fact that there are four BCS schools in those two states may or may not be a factor.

You can bet there will be more to come on that front.

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There are other aspects of this issue that need to be addressed (will the NCAA continue to sanction the Las Vegas Bowl?), but the bottom line is that here again we have an NCAA policy that will mostly, if not entirely, only affect its member institutions and its student-athletes in a negative manner. I’m not sure who in the organization thought it was a good idea. I only hope that, like the Andy Oliver case, it comes back to bite the NCAA in a major way.